Should Trump be Removed from Office?

Last week the leading evangelical magazine Christianity Today sent social media ablaze with their short article “Trump Should Be Removed from Office” which argued, as the title suggests, that Trump should be removed from office.

Mark Galli, the magazine’s editor-in-chief and author of the piece, calls on believers to join in support of removing the president because he is not morally fit to serve. To quote Galli, “The president of the United States attempted to use his political power to coerce a foreign leader to harass and discredit one of the president’s political opponents. That is not only a violation of the Constitution; more importantly, it is profoundly immoral.”

What follows is a rebuke of Donald Trump’s immorality and of evangelicals who would minimize or ignore it. “To the many evangelicals who continue to support Mr. Trump in spite of his blackened moral record, we might say this: Remember who you are and whom you serve.” Galli goes on to recite how Christianity Today had made similar calls for Bill Clinton’s removal based on his immorality and argues it would be hypocritical to hold Trump to a different standard.

While the article did set social media ablaze and has encouraged some evangelicals to also express concerns about the president, we should be under no delusion that this somehow represents a tipping point with Trump’s evangelical supporters. Nearly 200 evangelical leaders slammed Christianity Today’s piece and tales of Trump’s iniquities are hardly news to anyone. Most evangelicals had already made peace with Trump by embracing some variant of the idea that so long as he is faithful on the big issues, such as appointing pro-life justices, it matters not what else he does. And some evangelicals have become immune to any attempts to persuade them that Trump is anything other than a shining beacon of virtue.

Speaking as a Trump-skeptical evangelical myself, I must say Galli’s article came as a breath of fresh air in a torrent of evangelical Trump sycophants. Professing evangelicals have remained Trump’s biggest base of supporters and far too many of our leaders have blurred the lines between politics and their faith in a pitiful show of solidarity. If for no other reason, it’s at least nice hearing a leader in the evangelical faith offer misgivings similar to my own rather than suggesting, as Franklin Graham and Eric Metaxas did, that my views may stem from demon possession.

Nevertheless, I have two concerns with Galli’s article.

Concern #1: Is a President’s Moral Character the Best Criteria for Deciding Whether to Remove Him from Office?

Trump is only the third president to be impeached, but the prior impeachment took place a little under twenty years ago. Why was Bill Clinton impeached? Because he had an affair with a White House intern, right? Well, no. Not exactly.

The Republican-led House of Representatives impeached Bill Clinton in December of 1998 on grounds of perjury to a grand jury and obstruction of justice. In other words, he lied under oath about his relationship with Monica Lewinsky and he attempted to cover up his misdeeds. Was this immoral? Of course. But that’s not what got him impeached. What got him impeached was that his actions were a violation of his Constitutional duty as president.

I get that Galli is writing to a largely Christian audience who turn to Christianity Today for religious and moral insight and not necessarily political op-eds. And, for the most part, Galli does a decent job rightly delineating between his political judgments and his religious convictions. But he does leave open the possibility that a president’s moral character is the primary political means by which we may determine they should be removed from office.

Galli states that Trump’s use of “political power to coerce a foreign leader to harass and discredit one of the president’s political opponents” is a violation of the Constitution. But he goes on to stress that “more importantly, it is profoundly immoral”. He argues that “none of the president’s positives can balance the moral and political danger we face under a leader of such grossly immoral character” and concludes that removal is “not a matter of partisan loyalties but loyalty to the Creator of the Ten Commandments.”

The term “political means” is important here. Having built a moral case, Galli calls on evangelicals to support a political judgment. Galli’s faith informs his moral convictions, but does it offer us any insight into the mechanism or prudence of removal? The criteria whereby a president may be removed from office are somewhat complex, and we would do well to not conflate the matter by elevating morality to the criteria.

Immorality isn’t adequate justification for removing a president. Neither is incompetence. Neither is bad policy. Neither is breaking the law. Neither is imprudent or unjustified military action. All of these things can contribute to reasons for removing a president. But impeachment and removal aren’t ultimately moral or ideological or legal questions. They’re political questions.

Jonah Goldberg offers an excellent example. He says (and here I’m ad-libbing his actual quote) that if Trump ordered the bombing of a foreign city that wouldn’t be impeachable. But if he were to order the bombing of all of the hotels in that city that were competitors to the hotels he owned, that would be impeachable. The political mechanisms of impeachment and removal are intended to protect us from a President who is abusing his power and is violating the Constitution. It is not there to protect us from the consequences of our own decisions to elect someone who is immoral, incompetent, executing bad policy, breaking the law, or entangling us in military misadventures.

Since some may argue that all presidents abuse their power and violate the Constitution to some degree or another, how are we to know when the abuse and violations rise to the level of impeachment and removal? That is a matter of political prudence. Precisely how much of the president’s moral character should weigh into this decision is also a matter of prudence, and may prove to be a surprisingly complex question for some as was discussed in a recent podcast.

Concern #2: Has Galli Made a Strong Enough Case Trump Should be Removed from Office?

As I said above, I’m a Trump-skeptical evangelical. I didn’t vote for Trump (or Hillary) in 2016 and I have been disgusted by his continual misconduct in office, while simultaneously grateful for the modest policy victories won thus far. As such, I’m the in the demographic that would probably be the most receptive to Galli’s message. And indeed, I do agree with much of what he’s written. But when it comes to his central call to action, I remain skeptical:

“Whether Mr. Trump should be removed from office by the Senate or by popular vote next election—that is a matter of prudential judgment. That he should be removed, we believe, is not a matter of partisan loyalties but loyalty to the Creator of the Ten Commandments.”

Let me stipulate that, in a certain sense, I agree Trump should be removed. In fact, Trump should have never been the Republican nominee, let alone actually win the election in 2016. It’s of some consolation that Trump’s election spared us from a Hillary presidency, but the great tragedy of 2016 is that two of the most unfit and unlikeable candidates we’ve seen in my lifetime somehow managed to simultaneously become nominees of the two major parties in a country of legions of better candidates to choose from.

That being said, we do not have the luxury of resolving political questions in some mythical “ideal” world, but in the actual world in which we live. And we must deal with the limitations and complications this world throws our way.

If Trump is to be removed, Galli has correctly narrowed our choices down to the two Constitutional methods afforded to us: 1) removal by the Senate or 2) losing the election in 2020. Galli asserts that Trump ought to be removed by one of these two methods. Let’s briefly examine both.

Removal by the Senate

Removal is a big deal and should not be taken lightly. What’s more, removal is a question of prudential politics and not moral good. Many people who enter into a political conversation through an evangelical lens can grow uncomfortable with such talk because it sounds impure, messy, or sinful. But we must take care to distinguish between what ought to be and what is. It may sound pious to say that we should “do what’s right” regardless of the consequences, but, in politics, considering the consequences IS part of doing what’s right.

The point is that there may be circumstances in which retaining a president is a great evil, but removing the president produces an even greater evil. In our history as a nation, removal has never happened. But during those nearly 250 years eras of violent divisions and bickering and, in one extreme case, civil war has resulted from our inability to reconcile our differences over presidential disputes. Ideally, if a president is unfit for office it will become apparent to the majority of Americans and cut across ideological and partisan lines. Whether or not Republicans should feel that Trump is unfit is an entirely different question from whether or not they do.

Should Republicans reject Donald Trump? Absolutely! He is unfit for the high office of president both due to his lack of character and his abuse of his authority. But the fact is, the vast majority of Republicans don’t currently see it that way and it is highly unlikely that will change in an environment where the opposition party seems hellbent on competing with one another to drive further and further to the Left. Barring some unusual events, the attitudes on the president from both his supporters and opponents are very unlikely to change.

The purpose of removal is not to punish some wayward president or to satisfy Americans that the president got their comeuppance. The purpose is to protect the republic from a threat to the Constitutional order. The question must be asked then, under our current political divisiveness, which is the greater threat to the Constitutional order: the president or the further division that would likely result from his removal?

Losing the Election in 2020

Elections don’t occur in a vacuum. And, while I reject the idea that we are only presented with a binary choice on election day because we have the option of voting for a longshot candidate or simply not voting, we should not be ignorant of the likely consequences of our votes.

Many of my 2016 NeverTrump friends have sworn off voting for Trump in 2020 as well. I’m reluctant to make such a vow for fear that, once I do, the radical Left will manage to infiltrate enough of the Democratic party and nominate such a noxious candidate that they would appear to be a disproportionately greater threat to conservatism, the GOP, and the nation as a whole than anything Donald Trump has done or likely will do. In 2016 I did not believe either candidate represented a disproportionately greater threat than the other. I may not have that luxury the next time.

Here too some good old-fashion prudence is in order. If we have reason to believe (which we do) that the Democrats are unlikely to take the Senate in 2020, should that give us adequate cover to vote against Trump and hope the GOP wins big in 2024? Does it matter which candidate the Democrats nominate, or are they all better or worse than Trump? Would Trump winning in 2020 further push the Democrats to the Left or moderate the party? Would Trump winning in 2020 usher in the populist nationalism take-over of the GOP for a generation? Would it cost the GOP the youth vote, thereby handing the Democratic party larger victories for decades to come? If we had a major catastrophe, terrorist attack, or, God forbid, military conflict with a nation such as Russia or China over the next four years, would it be worth electing a Leftist president just to see to it we aren’t relying on Trump’s juvenile temperament to weather the storm?

Fellow Trump-skeptic evangelicals and Americans of all stripes will look at these same facts and disagree on what is to be done. I’m currently on the fence as to whether Trump should be removed from office given our current options.

Who Speaks for Evangelicals?

Maybe we should stop looking to “evangelical leaders” for spiritual advice on political matters. The good Lord has placed many incredible men and women in positions of authority and insight within our political institutions, and we would do well to heed their advice in matters of politics over the unlearned musings of those who have made a name for themselves in the evangelical faith but have no special knowledge or experience in politics.

Hardly a day goes by where some evangelical “leader” isn’t saying something cringeworthy in relation to the president. In spite of my reservations though, I do think Galli’s piece is laudable and, quite frankly, rather courageous given his audience. It’s a good start, but the real work must take place with you and I as we mull these thoughts over in our heads and hearts and learn to discuss them among ourselves with civility and sobriety.

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Confessions of a Recovering NeoCon

Earlier this month the Washington Post released the results of a multi-year investigation into the war in Afghanistan which have been termed the Afghanistan Papers. The release begins: “A confidential trove of government documents obtained by The Washington Post reveals that senior U.S. officials failed to tell the truth about the war in Afghanistan throughout the 18-year campaign, making rosy pronouncements they knew to be false and hiding unmistakable evidence the war had become unwinnable.”

The Afghanistan Papers include over 2,000 pages of tales of mismanagement and cover-up. Here’s a tidbit:

In an effort to learn from the results of the invasion and policy failures, the Pentagon embarked upon an $11 million project called “Lessons Learned”. Once completed, the Pentagon suppressed the unwelcome findings of the project. It was only after three years of legal battles with the Washington Post that the project was made public.To date, more than $133 billion has been allocated to build Afghanistan. Much of this spending has not been accounted for and has been described by those deployed to make payments as waste.Military commanders struggled to determine who they were fighting and why due to competing agendas in Washington. Corrupt Afghanistan warlords used this to their advantage to exploit American vulnerabilities and benefit from cash handouts.Administration officials under both Bush and Obama consistently misled the public in the waste and prospects of ending the war.No one has been held responsible.

As egregious as this might be, I suspect most of us have become desensitized to what will soon be two decades of tales of failures, setbacks, shortcomings, and discontent in the War on Terror. While some were critical of the wars proceeding 9/11 from the start, many Americans viewed Afghanistan as the “good war” and Iraq as the “bad war” for at least a season.

The Bad War

I had just begun college when the terrorist attacks on September 11, 2001 would forever change our world. That same year the Bush administration launched an attack on the Taliban government of Afghanistan in an effort to crush al-Qaeda and kill Osama bin Laden. The young are often idealistic, and I was no exception. As the War on Terror began to expand beyond Afghanistan and into Iraq the prospects of the United States destroying so many foreign threats and implanting allies all over the troubled Middle East was exhilarating.

I was just a kid when then president George Bush Sr. led the war effort against Saddam’s military occupation of Kuwait. I had no informed perspective on what a war with Iraq might look like then. To me, war meant the possibility that some “bad guys” might come strolling through our neighborhood someday, shooting at hapless bystanders and causing no shortage of mayhem. I was grateful for every news story that told of how the war was going well. Partially because I was caught up in the patriotic fervor of everyone around me. And partially because each victory made the prospects of an invasion of my neighborhood in Tulsa, Oklahoma by the Republican Guard feel more remote.

But in college things were different. I had no child-like fears about what Iraq could do to us and I had the utmost confidence in what we could do to them. Doubtless there would be costs and casualties, but it was inconceivable the US military would be turned away by Iraq’s feeble forces. And sure enough, that’s exactly what happened. The same patriotic fervor swelled in my heart as my country soundly defeated the regime of an evil dictator and liberated the good people of Iraq.

I became thoroughly convinced that the US had every right to invade Iraq. I believed that Saddam posed a serious threat to global and US interests and security and had to be removed from power. I was positively thrilled with the idea of Iraq becoming a flowering democracy and ultimately spreading Western-friendly values throughout the Middle East. Like any good Republican, I bought the Bush administration’s narrative on the war hook, line, and sinker.

Nearly two decades have passed, and Americans have grown increasingly weary or even hostile to these war efforts, viewing them as unnecessary, costly, unjustified, ill-conceived, and, in some cases, evil from the start. Ask an American why Bush got us involved in the wars in the first place and answers vary from idealistic (he wanted to stop the evil villain Saddam and liberate the good people of Iraq), coldly opportunistic (he just wanted to pay less for oil and found the attacks on September 11 a perfect excuse), sympathetic (he really did think Saddam had weapons of mass destruction and believed he was a threat), to the downright absurd (Bush wanted to get the man who tried to kill his daddy).

Laying my cards on the table, I continue to believe the wars—both the invasion of Afghanistan and Iraq—were the right thing to do. Afghanistan because it was the most hospitable to the terrorists who had attacked us and vowed to do so again. Iraq for reasons that are more complicated, but not less justifiable. Not to plant a flowering democracy. Not because Saddam was a murderous monster who killed his own citizens by the multitudes (he was, but so were other dictators who posed no similar threat to the US or its allies). But because the continued existence and defiance of Saddam’s regime in a post-9/11 world represented a threat Western democracies could not ignore. Whether Saddam had weapons of mass destruction or not, the possibility he’d someday acquire them and use them was too great to ignore.

NeoCon Apostate

But this post isn’t about justifying the wars. And justification for the war in Iraq would take a far longer post than this (I’ll refer the reader to this interview with the late Christopher Hitchens on Jon Stewart’s show on a brief listing of why the invasion of Iraq was justified). This post isn’t about where I haven’t changed my mind, but where I have. It’s about shedding the ideas I held in my mind and passion buried in my heart way back in college as slowly, almost imperceptibly, I began to doubt some of the tenets of the NeoCon narrative I had adopted so eagerly.

I will use the term NeoCon here to mean one who has the sort of attitude promoted by the Bush administration in the run-up to the wars—the idea that all people yearn for freedom and, as such, if only we could unshackle them of their oppressive leaders they would soon learn to live peaceably and value liberty just like we did.

If the reader will pardon a brief aside, I feel duty-bound to stress that I am in no way commenting on the ideas embodied in Neoconservatism, which I find to be complex, highly defensible, honorable, and—in a lot of cases—in line with my own views. Neoconservatism is a uniquely American brand of conservative thought that has a rich history filled with intellectuals well worth reading and studying. It is a terrible shame that the term has been reduced to a simple pejorative of one who is war hawkish (ironically, the original neoconservatives had very little to say about warfare).

With that said, back to the matter at hand. What has transpired in places like Afghanistan and Iraq over these past 18 years has brought to light how wrongheaded I was to suppose the sort of peace, stability, and liberty I had in mind was achievable, let alone inevitable. Had I been a better student of history I would have understood that people and cultures develop institutions and norms slowly over generations and that it is through this process that liberties can be cultivated and maintained.

Russell Kirk said it best: “Liberty forced on a people unfit for it is a curse, bringing anarchy.” There was a reason places like Germany and Japan developed democracies after their countries were occupied and their former governments dissolved: they had developed the sort of Western cultural norms and institutions that could hold liberty in order so that it wasn’t used for chaos. Just as there was a reason Russia returned to an oligarchy and Palestine devolved into a theocratic nightmare not long after they became “democracies”. Afghanistan and Iraq are using the newfound freedoms they were given in precisely the manner their cultural norms and institutions had done: use liberty to band together to fight off feuding tribes until a strong leader eventually emerges and puts an end to liberty.

What Should Have Been Done?

Could this have ever been otherwise? Is it possible that Afghanistan and Iraq could have developed stable democracies had we managed things better, or at least differently? Perhaps. But my suspicion is that “better” or “differently” would mean paying a price war-weary Americans are simply not willing to pay. And there’s the rub. There seems to be a wide gulf between what options were available to us that might have led to outcomes we could have been proud of, or at least lived with, and what options were politically viable.

It’s one thing to say that something should have been done after 9/11. Most Americans, so far as I can tell, agree that invading Afghanistan to “get bin Laden” was the right thing to do. Many Americans would probably say that taking out Saddam was in our national interests in some way. Very well. Then what?

Should we have just bombed these countries to smithereens? That might have crippled Saddam’s forces and harmed the Taliban, but would it really accomplish much else? Would it have killed Saddam or bin Laden (two men we couldn’t find even after invading their respective countries)? Would it have provided adequate assurance after 9/11 that such attacks couldn’t happen again? Would it have killed multitudes of innocent civilians needlessly? Would it have created a power vacuum so that regional powers such as Iran or other terrorist organizations could have moved in?

What if we had simply invaded and left after the regimes were toppled and the “bad guys” apprehended? It took quite some time after invading to locate Saddam and even longer to find bin Laden. Once we were there, we were there. Pulling up our tent stakes would have surely looked like an act of betrayal to the frail alliances we had worked so hard to build and may have bolstered the enemies that came later. And isn’t leaving these nations to sort all of this out for themselves after losing a war part of what got us in this mess in the first place?

Features and Bugs

I must confess I don't know what all we could have done differently to secure a good outcome. I don't mean that we hadn't made HUGE mistakes, and that many of them could have been avoided. Of course, things could have been less wasteful, dishonest, and embarrassing. But in some sense these missions were probably failed from the start in some way and the mistakes—endless wars, massive wastes, unclear objectives—were features not bugs. Much like hoping we can “fix things” by electing the “right people”, the problems here were embedded in the nature of what we were trying to do and focusing on the specifics would have only produced marginal improvements.

To put it bluntly, I don't know how a democratic nation fights a war that doesn't have the full and sustained support of its people, especially since "its people" seem to have radically competing and often unrealistic views on what the war aims and justifications might be. True, some of that confusion was thanks to our leaders. But what might the outcome have been had President Bush said from day one that these wars were going to last decades and cost hundreds of billions and kill more Americans than those who died on 9/11 because otherwise we couldn’t sustain the efforts needed to convert non-Western civilizations into the kinds of people needed to form a vibrant democracy?

On the flip side, what if Bush had simply said we were going to accomplish our missions and then hand the countries over to some authoritarian strongman who may be as evil as Saddam was to his own people, but at least he was happy to do what we asked so long as we looked the other way whenever he cracked down on uprisings? Would Americans have gotten on board with that idea?

I’m reminded of President Obama's opposition to strongmen like Musharraf in Pakistan during the campaign and his excitement at Morsi's demise in Egypt and Qaddafi’s demise in Libya during the Arab Spring. Though half of the country would be loathe to admit it, I suspect Obama’s general sentiments here express a nearly universal American idea: that we don’t have to be “OK” with “bad guys” around the world. That we can cheer when they’re brought down by their people because “the people” are surely capable of instituting something better than what they left behind.

But what followed? The Pakistan that deposed Musharraf was the same Pakistan that harbored bin Laden. The Egypt that jailed Morsi has teetered on the brink of falling to radical Islamists and the Libya that beat Qaddafi to death has shattered into anarchy that eventually led to the attack on the US embassy in Benghazi.

As a culture, I don’t know that we're as willing to believe in the fallen nature of man as we are willing to suppose that peace and security is possible without having to sacrifice our principles of liberty or Western values on strongmen who just happen to hate all the right people. To the extent that's true, I don't honestly know how a nation like ours sustains military and diplomatic relations successfully in the long term. Perhaps in a war against an enemy that is capable of meeting us head to head, things would be different. But these endless proxy wars and nation-building in places that are only accustom to nation-demolition is proving to be a challenge just beyond our reach.

I must confess I don't know what "ought" to have been done. Nor do I have an easy solution for where we go now, or what we do the next time a similarly vague threat is presented. I don't like the way things were handled and believe it's totally fair to blame so many on so much that's gone wrong. I held unrealistic expectations about the war's aftermath and hope I've matured since then. Because I have to believe that maturity—not just mine but the maturity of the nation as a whole—is precisely what’s necessary to set about the hard business of fighting a war and securing the sort of outcome we can be proud of.

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Episode 47 - Wonkish Optimism with Andy Smarick

As Republicans look ahead to the end of the Trump presidency (whether that’s a year away or five years out) many are beginning to ask, “what does a post-Trump GOP look like?”

For conservatives who have spent the past three years as outcasts from a party increasingly given to populist nationalism, the prospects are both exciting and worrying. Will things ‘go back to normal’? Will the Republican party once again be the home of conservatism? Or has Trump permanently changed things? And, if so, how much has changed?

Saving Elephants host Josh Lewis is joined by Andy Smarick who holds an optimistic view of what the future has in store for conservatives. His recent article in The Bulwark entitled The Post-Trump GOP argues that few presidents have had a lasting impact on their party, and that Trump is even less likely leave his mark as “Trumpism has failed in terms of principles, people, and popularity.”

But it’s not enough to hope for the end of populist nationalism in the GOP. Conservatives must have something better to offer as an alternative. And to that end, Andy makes his case for why conservatism has a rich and deep heritage that will long outlast the Age of Trump.

LISTEN HERE

About Andy Smarick

Andy Smarick is the Director, of Civil Society, Education and Work at R Street, a free-market think tank with a pragmatic approach to public policy challenges. We draw inspiration from such thinkers as Milton Friedman, Friedrich Hayek, Ronald H. Coase, James M. Buchanan and Arthur C. Pigou. Andy researches and writes about civil-society issues at R Street, including localism, governing institutions, education and social entrepreneurship.

Before joining R Street, Andy was a Morgridge Fellow at the American Enterprise Institute and served as president of the Maryland State Board of Education. Prior to that, he worked at the White House as an aide in the Domestic Policy Counsel and was a deputy assistant secretary at the U.S. Department of Education. He was also the deputy commissioner of education in New Jersey and a legislative assistant at the U.S. House of Representatives.

Andy has authored or edited four books The Urban School System of the Future: Applying the Principles and Lessons of Chartering (2012); Closing America’s High-achievement Gap: A Wise Giver’s Guide to Helping Our Most Talented Students Reach Their Full Potential (2013); Catholic School Renaissance: A Wise Giver’s Guide to Strengthening a National Asset (2015); and No Longer Forgotten: The Triumphs and Struggles of Rural Education in America (2018).

Andy earned his bachelor’s degree, summa cum laude and with honors, in government and politics from the University of Maryland, and his master’s in public management from UMD’s School of Public Policy. He lives in Stevensville, Maryland with his wife and three kids.

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Belated Thanksgiving

This week’s post is going to be significantly shorter than most as work has been crazy (hey, I don’t get paid to blog and podcast!) and I’m gearing up for another blog series. But before that series begins, next week’s post will be on the dreadful topic of suffering, death, and our growing inability to cope with it all; in case you were in any danger of having a weekend of blissful ignorance.

Since Thanksgiving is little more than a week behind us, I thought it would be fitting to give a brief post about the many MANY ways in which we have it better than we could probably imagine before launching into something quite so macabre. To that end, I wanted to share the good news about how we are doing better now than in the past. By “we” I mean just about everyone on the planet, and by “in the past” I mean all generations of humans who have come before us.

I don’t mean to imply we are without problems, or that some of those problems aren’t more troubling than what people have had to deal with in the past. I don’t mean to suggest we should self-congratulate to the point we lull ourselves into complacency and inaction. I simply mean that by a vast array of measurable metrics, our world is doing far better than it ever has been. While, curiously, a lot of people seem to be of the opinion things are far worse than they ever have been.

I could literally drown you out in stats and links, but I’ll share just a few points to ponder. For those interested, Jonah Goldberg devotes the appendix to his book Suicide of the West to covering the many ways in which our lives have improved. And Marian Tupy of the Cato Institute runs the website HumanProgress.com which is replete with stats and figures on the many ways things are getting better for us all. In fact, you can listen to Jonah and Marian on this very topic in a recent Remnant podcast.

Jim Geraghty’s recent article in National Review entitled The World Is Getting Better. It’s Just That No One Tells You About It. shares how breakthroughs in health could potentially cure everything from cat allergies to Ebola, Americans are more prosperous, the environment is improving, terrorism is diminishing, to the prospects for more global stability.

Again, none of this suggests we are without problems, even problems that could potentially fester into BIG problems. But much of charting a wise and prudential course into the future requires an accurate assessment of where we currently stand.

Sadly, that’s not the case. The Cato Institute recently shared that global poverty has halved over the past two decades (HALVED!!!) despite the fact most people living in advanced economies have a far bleaker sense. More than 90% of Americans believe extreme world poverty has remained the same or even increased (as evidenced by Cato's graph at the top of this post).

How truly remarkable that right at the moment humanity has never been more prosperous the world over, so many of us are of the belief we’ve never had it so bad. Gratitude may be out of style, but it’s never been more called for.

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Episode 46 - Should Presidents be our Role Models?

Saving Elephants host Josh Lewis and frequent guest Bob Burch delve into questions about looking to our political leaders as role models and the tension between morality and ability when choosing who should govern us. This discussion was prompted by a listener’s email:

Hi there,

I'm a new follower and listener to your podcast, but I like that after each episode you ask for people to contact you with thoughts or ideas. Since Trump has been in office I keep hearing about how horrible of a person he is a sexist, womanizer, racist, and the list goes on and on. I personally don't believe much or any of that narrative but here's my thought regardless, do we have to elect a president that we view as a role model? And, when did we (Americans) get so consumed with thinking of our president as a "role model"? Let's let our presidents do what they were elected to do!

In every presidential election that I can remember, polls indicate that people care more about jobs and the economy overwhelmingly more than any other social issue. Trump is in office because the majority of voters thought he was better for the economy.

I think that the left and their cancel culture has made it so that if anyone has skeletons in their closet they can never be electable or even run a business!

Once again, people should be finding role models and people to look up to in other places. A teacher, pastor, mentor or even athlete and not their elected leaders; it shouldn't be criteria to be a good public servant or leader of the free world.

I would entertain any thoughts or feedback!

Thanks,

Brandon

LISTEN HERE

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